Norfolk: Weekend to remember

Sue Webster takes tips from a Michelin-starred chef on the wild Norfolk coast

12:01AM GMT 16 Nov 2001

MY least successful New Year's resolution was the one in which I determined to broaden my culinary repertoire. By the second week of February, I had had a run-in with a ferocious chilli which seeped under my fingernails and burnt my eye, so I was able to give up my resolution immediately on health grounds. This year, I hit on a more enjoyable way of improving my cooking skills, which combined lessons with a luxurious break on the north Norfolk coast.

Morston Hall is a small, country-house hotel owned and run by the Blackistons, a young couple who met when they were both trainees at John Tovey's Miller Howe Hotel in Windermere. Thanks to Galton Blackiston's prowess in the kitchen, Morston Hall now has a Michelin star, yet its style remains intimate rather than smart: Tracey Blackiston is quite likely to serve you in the restaurant while Galton still tours the room after dinner to ask for feedback.

We budding chefs had been told to arrive in time for tea "by the open fire" on the Sunday, which would have been cosy had the weather not been unseasonably warm. Still, we were not complaining: our boat trip from Morston Quay, just a few hundred yards from the hotel, to Blakeney Point the following day would have been a disaster if the rain had not held off. Instead, the grassy hillocks and boardwalks of the Point were illuminated by a ravishing golden light and a balmy stillness that made us feel like characters in a Virginia Woolf novel.

I wondered if the seals - the main reason for chugging across this stretch of water - would be as interesting as promised. In the event, they proved to be fascinating: doe-eyed, honking and lolling in their hundreds like some unruly beach party, or swimming thrillingly around the boat.

It was clear from Galton's introductory chat that many people had been before. "Oh yes, we're Galton's groupies," they confirmed, amid hoots of laughter. The lack of male students was noticeable, but the chef aims to recruit reluctant males with a men's cookery club when Morston Hall's new, larger kitchen opens in January.

Meanwhile, there were recipes to peruse and home-made biscuits to try, followed by the evening ritual of bathing and changing to the strains of Placido Domingo (CDs provided in the bedrooms), followed by drinks in the conservatory and dinner "at 7.30 for 8pm". Dinner is a four-course, no-choice set menu which is served to all guests in one sitting - an arrangement I always like.

Sensibly, perhaps, the cookery demonstrations take place only in the mornings, from 10.30 until lunch (usually something we witnessed in the making), leaving the afternoons to work up an appetite for the next meal. In just one morning, Galton would work his way through sultana brioche, tart Bourdaloue, pear sorbet, port jelly, terrine of foie gras and duck, and poached fillet of brill with ginger and lemon grass nage.

The atmosphere in the kitchen was hectic, even if we were only watching. Sometimes I made notes, sometimes I just sat back and enjoyed the students' jokes or the slapstick between Galton and his plump, blushing sous-chef - a rugby player who could double as a sort of kingsize Johnny to Blackiston's mild Fanny Craddock.

My non-cooking partner was free in the mornings to read his book or wander along the sandbanks to Cley- or Wells-next-the-Sea, casually observing the oyster catchers and sandpipers which trod delicately across the low tide as he walked. The freshwater marshes around this part of the coast make a happy hunting ground for serious birdwatchers, and even we were charmed by the constant calls and twitters and the big, pale sky full of seabirds. We made a pilgrimage to Wells to see the famous beach huts, which are just as evocative out of season.

The suites at Morston Hall are named after the stately homes of Norfolk, such as Felbrigg and Blickling, and many of the would-be cooks and their husbands reported traipsing round the lofty salons and admiring the ancient hedges. Other than the seal-viewing expedition, we preferred to spend our afternoons in Holt, rummaging in the so-called antique shops. I can't think what you would do with a 1950s' washboard or a rusty tin placard advertising cocoa, but they do look pretty arranged inside or out in this town of converted flint cottages with hollyhock-framed doors and gates painted an artful duck egg blue.

My cooking did improve. I rushed out to buy a big, professional mixer and now make lots of bread and cakes for the children with very little effort. I still don't buy calves' liver: watching Galton cut out the pipework made me feel faintly nauseous, and I don't see the point of cleaning my own scallops when the fishmonger does them so nicely.

But I can reproduce at least three fish dishes, and all my meat dishes come as little towers incorporating layers of vegetables and heavily reduced stocks - or jus, as I have learned to call them. My friends are impressed. It's amazing what a little presentation can do.

Morston Hall, Morston, Holt, Norfolk NL25 7AA (01263 741041). The next three-day residential cookery course starts on November 18 and costs £450 per person, based on two people sharing a room - if non-participating partners, pay £330 - to include all meals and afternoon tea. The nearest rail station is Sheringham, and you can continue your journey by taxi (Anglia Taxis, 01263 822222), though it is better to go by car so that you can explore the area.